When Larry Brown pulled off Route 209 into the new Bushkill Information Center on Thursday, the Bangor repairman barely had a foot in the door before a park archaeologist and the president of a park promotional group were each at his service, brandishing hiking maps and tales of local frogs.

SARAH JEROME

When Larry Brown pulled off Route 209 into the new Bushkill Information Center on Thursday, the Bangor repairman barely had a foot in the door before a park archaeologist and the president of a park promotional group were each at his service, brandishing hiking maps and tales of local frogs.

"I'm always up here for work, but I had never come in before," Brown said.

His chance stopping at the wood-and-brick building he had long believed to be a museum garnered him more area information than he likely knew what to do with, on everything from local kayaking to the best candle stores in the county.

"I fish back here and I always see this place," Brown said. "Thought I'd stop in."

It's no coincidence that the center's staff were ready for Brown. In fact, he's "just the kind of person we're expecting," said Gail Wershing, the president of Friends of Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area who bedecked Brown in pamphlets and maps upon his arrival.

"Anytime we were in this building, someone stopped," Wershing said, referring to the lodge that once served as a meeting place for her non-profit.

For Wershing and her fellow volunteers, park enthusiasts hoping to promote the park and the area with their group, traffic from stoppers-by illuminated an opportunity.

"We realized this is a valuable point of contact with the public that needed to be opened," Wershing said.

And so the Bushkill Information Center was born. Located in Lehman Township, the center will be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends and holidays through Labor Day, starting this Saturday. Organizers said it will serve as a hub where passers-by, curious tourists and those that just got lost on the highway can ask questions, learn about the area and collect more free maps and brochures than they ever dreamed existed.

"The idea is, 'Let us help you find the most beautiful places in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation area and the surrounding community,'" Wershing said.

The center aims to provide a boon to local tourism while "disseminating information" about the park, according to Wershing. The focus on tourism distinguishes the new center from the two park visitor centers that already exist.

Those federally funded visitors centers aren't free to promote commercial entities, said John Wright, the park archaeologist who assisted Brown and the chief of visitor services and cultural resources for the park. He's also a descendant of Wilbur and Orville, as chatty stoppers-by frequently learn, and has helped the Friends of the Delaware Water Gap prepare the center.

The Bushkill Information Center, he said, will promote tourism in a way the visitor centers are restricted from doing by federal regulations.

Visitors centers also face limitations on accepting donations from commercial entities, he added. In contrast, two of Bushkill Information Center's main sponsors are local resorts.

This means that the new center's staff, which will consist of a park ranger and volunteers from the Wershing's non-profit, can steer tourists toward what they consider the best destinations in the area, making recommendations on where to stay and what to eat.

"Try Fratelli's," Wershing said, touting a favorite restaurant.

If the center's maiden summer is successful — to be measured by comment cards passed out to stoppers-by — Wershing said the goal is to keep the center open for greater parts of the week and year.

The way to do that, she said, is by gaining more commercial sponsors.

Fittingly, the walls of the center are lined with promotional brochures and advertisements, from coupons for the Pocono Cheesecake Factory to directions to Fernwood Hotel & Resorts.

But organizers said Bushkill Information Center will be more than a mouthpiece for local businesses.

When a recent survey identified that 7,000 cars traffic a nearby intersection everyday, according to Wright, members of Wershing's non-profit realized that the location is prime for educating people about the park. The center's staff is prepared to relay information on everything from the migratory patterns of local amphibians to the history of how the park was formed.

"It's amazing how many people don't know where they're at when they pull up," Wershing said.

So when visitors come knocking, she starts with the basics.

"Do you know that you are in a park?" she asked Brown as he walked in the door.

But this time she'd reeled in a local. Noting his fishing trips in the Delaware River as Wershing conjured a three-foot map of the whole recreation area, Brown said that he did.

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